Jack Dorsey: Cash Register Receipts Are a New "Publishing Medium"

Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and internet poet laureate, has officially been high off the fumes of his own shit for too long. Today he took the stage at the National Retail Federation expo in New York, and preached nutso visions about sales receipts.

BuzzFeed stopped by the thrilling trade convention, and captured Dorsey's latest proton stream of nonsense, as it relates to his booming commerce startup Square:

"What if we see the receipt more as a publishing medium — a product unto itself that people actually want to take home, that they want to engage with, be fully interactive with?" Dorsey asked a room of people at the Javits Center today during the National Retail Federation's annual expo.

"What can we do with this everyday tool?" he said. "What can we build into this canvas that's actually valuable, that's independent of the product you just sold? What can you give in this communication channel, this publishing medium, that people want to engage with?

[...]

Another way retailers could better use receipts is by adding their Twitter handle to them, he said.

Man, that is serious, visionary stuff.

#nrf14 Jack Dorsey: What if the receipt becomes an application? What could you do?

Dorsey didn't actually explain how any of this makes any sense at all, or is not a poor caricature of startup fever dreaming, so I'll offer an idea: receipts are dumb and annoying, and we should just have them archived in our email somewhere in case we need them for taxes. No one should be trying to make receipts interesting. They're receipts.